Ryan Hass | Director at John L. Thornton China Center | The Brookings Institution website
Yingyi Ma, a nonresident senior fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center, discusses in an April 30 commentary how recent advances by Chinese artificial intelligence companies highlight a shift in the global technology race. The article points to DeepSeek and Manus as examples of Chinese AI firms whose teams were trained entirely within China.
Ma says that the central issue in United States-China technological competition is not limited to industrial policy or semiconductor supply chains, but includes cultural and educational factors that shape technical talent. She writes, "The emergence of frontier AI innovation from domestically trained Chinese talent exposes a critical gap in how the United States understands the technological competition with China."
According to Ma, academic achievement is socially valued within Chinese schools while American students often face social pressures that discourage high performance in math and science. She notes research indicating that Asian enrollment increases are sometimes met with white enrollment declines in affluent U.S. school districts due to differences in academic culture.
The commentary references data showing China has surpassed the United States as the top producer of STEM doctoral degrees globally, with over 12 million projected university graduates from China in 2025 alone—a figure more than double all U.S. higher education degrees combined for that year. While some argue scale does not guarantee quality, Ma notes that even a small percentage of top-tier graduates translates into significant numbers for China's workforce.
Ma also highlights challenges facing America's traditional model for attracting technical talent through immigration and domestic education pipelines. She says declining math scores among American students and structural barriers such as early tracking systems contribute to this challenge.
To address these issues, Ma suggests three interventions: reforming early tracking systems; confronting cultural aversion to academic competition; and building institutional support for academic achievement on par with athletics. Quoting former President Barack Obama at a White House Science Fair, she writes: "As a society, we have to celebrate outstanding work by young people in science at least as much as we do Super Bowl winners...they’re what’s going to transform our society." According to the official website, the John L. Thornton China Center is part of the Brookings Institution and focuses on independent analysis of U.S.-China relations along with research on international relations topics.
The John L. Thornton China Center collaborates with Tsinghua University for joint dialogues and events according to its official website. It offers publications such as blogs, opinion pieces, monographs and books aimed at policymakers and public audiences according to its official website. Ryan Hass led the center while holding the Chen-Fu and Cecilia Yen Koo Chair in Taiwan Studies according to its official website.
